Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Soupy fog

I live approximately 140 miles north of where I grew up.  My hometown and my current home are both in the Central Valley of California and November - February in the Central Valley means one thing - fog.  I grew up with it so I'm used to it but it doesn't mean it's not still scary and sucky. 

Growing up we had foggy day schedule a couple times a year.  There were two kinds of foggy day schedule; Plan A and Plan B.  Plan A foggy day schedule was awesome because what it meant to us was that school was delayed by an hour and a half.  The buses didn't run until then because presumably the fog would have burned off some by then.  All three schools we attended while growing up (elementary, junior high, high school) were no further than 3/4 of a mile from my house.  I never rode a bus to school a day in my life.  That didn't matter when it came to foggy day, though!  The schedule was for everyone.  Plan B foggy day schedule was what we prayed every night for.  It meant the buses didn't run at all that day.  It was pretty much an excused absence if you didn't show up to school.  Nevermind that I grew up literally around the corner from my junior high.  We used to actually wait for the bell to ring before we'd leave for school, that's how close we lived.  That didn't keep us from staying home one day in 7th grade when Plan B was called.  We took advantage big-time.  

On January 28, 1986, Plan A foggy day schedule was called and my brother and I were playing wiffle ball in the livingroom. At 8:35am, while killing another full hour until school started, the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up.  We saw it happen live on television and even though I was only 10 years old, I knew that it was an historical moment and thanks to Plan A we witnessed it happening.

The fog is dangerous and horrible and it shows up every year whether we want it to or not.  There is no such thing as, "Oh, I drive in it all the time, I'm used to it."  Today was foggy for much of the morning and it came back late this afternoon.  I'm thankful that other than having to take the kids to school during the prime-fog time of the early morning that neither Chris nor I have to be driving in it this week but lots of people have to.  I just hope they aren't idiots.  People are idiots and if for no other reason, the fog terrifies me.

This was the freeway at 11:15am this morning.  You can imagine how thick it was earlier in the morning.


Pulling into my cul-de-sac just before noon.



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1 comment:

  1. I had never seen fog as thick as when we moved to Lemoore NAS in 1989. I remember when My sister Amy and I had to do a team effort, she would drive and I would watch the painted stipe of the Highway at 10 miles an hour to get home.

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